A new species of human
is emerging at the leading edge of technology, as the internet and
consumer nanotechnologies create a collective extension of our minds.
The driver of our evolution is no longer DNA - it's software!

In June I wrote a blog about Project xiii, which I have posted about previously, and included in it a short grab from a Blogtalk chat with Julien Wells. Julien for a number of months has been honing his abilities to communicate with the Pleiadians and in this audio grab he talks about an internet which is being developed, and is very much in line with what you spoke about Fintan.

A video from the Seattle-based company showed a drone labelled
"Amazon PrimeAir" taking a package from a distribution centre to a
customer's front yard.

"In urban areas, you could actually cover very significant portions of the
population," Bezos said. "It won't work for everything — we're not going to
deliver kayaks or table saws this way. These are electric motors, so this is
all electric. It's very green. It's better than driving trucks around."

The drones would be autonomous, flying to programmed GPS co-ordinates.

"The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all
the systems you need to say — look, this thing can't land on somebody's
head while they're walking around their neighbourhood."

Bezos said the drones couldn't be put in place until 2015 because it would
take that long to work out regulations with the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration. He said he optimistically hopes the drones could be
delivering packages in four or five years.

"It will work and it will happen and it's going to be a lot of fun," he said.

And if you check out the video below it's also clear to see that the days
of having ANY humans in an Amazon warehouse are numbered:

Quote:

A Day in the Life of an Amazon Package

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) –- Amazon's business runs on speed, price and customer service. We go inside Amazon's Phoenix 6 fulfillment center to see the technology it takes to keep those little brown boxes moving, from the moment they arrive on a truck to the moment they get packed into a box and shipped out. (Source: Bloomberg)
VIEW VIDEO >

Quote:

The Rise of Robotic Air Travel

02 DEC 2013 11:49 ALISTAIR FAIRWEATHER
[.....]

Amazon is not the first company to think of this idea. Zookal, an Australian textbook rental service, has promised to start using drones for deliveries in Sydney as early as next year.

Thanks to Australia's laxer regulations, Zookal does not have to clear as many hurdles as Amazon, and it is starting at a slightly smaller scale: just six drones.

But the real story here is not Amazon's brilliantly executed PR coup, or the fact that you'll be able to have that new gadget delivered to you in the time it takes to watch an episode of Modern Family. This is merely the thin end of the wedge of robotic air transportation.

These drones are, essentially, flying robots. Amazon is already quite at home with robots. Last year, it acquired Kiva Systems, a specialist in warehouse automation. Today, Kiva's robots zip around Amazon warehouses carrying heavy loads faster and more accurately than human beings would ever be able to manage.

In order to do this, the robots must be relatively autonomous. They must know not only where they're going and the optimal route to get there, but also how to avoid collisions with each other and other objects in the warehouse.

All of this artificial intelligence will be built into Amazon's octocopters, enabling them to deliver their packages with an absolute minimum of human interaction.

Floating high above the traffic-congested city streets, the drones are an ideal solution to an age-old logistical challenge: delivering your product faster, cheaper and more accurately. With no delivery van and no delivery guy, it will be cheaper and delivery routes will literally be as the crow flies.

Cynics will immediately dismiss Amazon's plans as unfeasible because of the US's gun crazy populous, who might take to shooting down passing drones and making off with their payloads. While this will undoubtedly happen on occasion, it is essentially similar to worrying that the whole of the US will start hijacking courier vans.

But if we can do this with small packages, why can't we do this with cargo planes? Human beings are expensive, prone to errors and heavy. Commercial airliners can already, essentially, fly themselves. Only two things are holding this idea back: security concerns and political will.

But, it's micro-drones which will have a potentially larger application.

Either way, there's a heap of new kids on the block:

Quote:

From Amazon to Burritos : 10 Things
You Need to Know About Consumer Drones

Stuart Dredge - The Observer, Sunday 1 December 2013

While drones are most associated with military uses, commercial drones (used by companies like Amazon) and consumer drones (used by us) are both growing areas. Here's a primer.

1 Moving beyond warzones

The use of drones – unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs for short – in military conflicts remains controversial. But drones have consumer uses too, and a growing number of companies are pouring money into making them mainstream in the years ahead. One of those firms, 3D Robotics, raised $30m of funding in September, while the Federal Aviation Administration expects 30,000 drones to be flying over the US alone in 20 years' time.

2 Parrot's AR.Drone 2.0

Perhaps the best-known consumer drone is Parrot's AR.Drone, which is in its second-generation model. It's a "quadricopter" controlled from your smartphone or tablet, which is capable of zipping around for 36 minutes at a time, recording and streaming video. £279 in the UK, it has an add-on Flight Recorder accessory that uses GPS to navigate a pre-set route, and plot it on a map.

3 First Person View (FPV)

Besides UAV, another abbreviation you'll often see used when talking about consumer drones is FPV, for First Person View. That refers to drones capable of recording video as they go and streaming it so the owner can steer as if they were sitting in the drone. Some, like the AR.Drone 2.0, offer FPV through their built-in cameras. Others, like the Lehmann LA100, use cameras like the GoPro Hero3+correct, and there's plenty of sites explaining how keener owners can build their own FPV drones too.

4 Military inspiration

Having said that consumer drones are moving away from the military world, it's fair to say that a number of them take their design inspiration from the drones being used in warzones. The 4 Channel Predator/Reaper Style UAV Drone RC Plane is a miniature version of the US air force's RQ-1 Predator UAV, for example, encouraging buyers to "fly your own covert missions". For anyone who's followed the debate about military drone-related deaths, the comparison may be distasteful though.

5 Price: how high can it go?

There's a wide range of consumer drones available. Sub-£100 devices aren't a huge leap from traditional remote-controlled helicopters, with the real action happening between £200 and £400 – although prices are likely to come down over the next year or two. 3D Robotics' 3DR Iris costs $729.99 in the US, but prices go as high as $30,000 for the Aibotix Aibot X6 UAV, which is more focused on commercial use – for example, by filmmakers . Not the kind of thing you'd want to slam into a tree.

6 There's apps for them

One of the key features of consumer drones is their ability to be controlled by smartphone and tablet apps, although how open they are to developers varies. The AR.Drone led the way in terms of getting apps beyond pure controllers. AR.Race 2 runs on iPhones and iPads, and operates as a racing game for the drone, with players taking turns to complete a course as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, AR.Rescue 2 is an augmented reality game with virtual aliens that need rescuing. Expect to see more of this as drones get more popular.

7 Commercial uses growing

As more drones get into the hands of individuals, so they'll start using them for work. Germany has a Dönercopter delivering doner kebabs, California has a Burrito Bomber delivering burritos. Sydney firm Flirtey runs a flying book-delivery service. Journalists and activists have also used drones: US journalist Tim Pool customised a drone – the Occucopter – and flew it above the Occupy Wall Street protests to stream footage to the outside world, for example.

8 Drones aren't just about air

They are swimming and walking too. Portuguese company Azorean raised $127,000 on crowdfunding site Kickstarter to make Ziphius, which it described as "the first app-controlled aquatic drone that plays augmented reality games and shows autonomous behaviours". It's expected to go on sale in 2014. Meanwhile, the Walkera QR Infra X Smart Drone walks around the house, has sensors to avoid collisions, and can even climb the stairs.

9 Is this legal?

There's been a lot of debate – more so in the US – about the legality of non-military drones, more in connection with commercial uses and the potential for spying on people. Legal bans on commercial drones left the way clear for consumer models to come out – some of which can be used for commercial purposes. Expect to see some high-profile publicity too if anyone misuses their drone: people buzzing their neighbours' barbecues or spying on spouses or smacking someone in the face with a falling quadricopter could all spark lawsuits.

10 March into the mainstream

Consumer drones are a growing niche. There's even already a beginner's guide-style e-book: Getting Started with Hobby Quadcopters and Drones, to demystify the area. They also fit into wider trends, from GoPro and other wearable cameras to Lego Mindstorms robotics, that will make them seem less strange in time. That should make 2013 and 2014 a good time for serious discussion about the social implications of the technology.

No doubt, much of what you say will come to pass,
and much more again that we cannot even envision at this early stage of development.

I know this was probably meant as a rhetorical question,
but I will answer anyway:

Q: Who needs to remember?
A: I do !!

Where this will take us remains to be seen.
But just as the use of calculators has enfeebled an entire generation in the simplest of mathematical tasks,
and just as the latest portable devices have paralysed the simplest of human interaction, I fear for the worst...

OK, OK... I am old now, and old-fashioned too...
But I can still add 2+2.

Martin Ford
is the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm, with over 25 years experience in the fields of computer design and software development. He has written for The Atlantic, Slate, The Huffington Post and has contributed to NPR. "The Lights in the Tunnel" shows how accelerating technology is likely to have a highly disruptive influence on our economy in the near future--and may well already be a significant factor in the current global crisis.

- Will Robots save the US economy and Jobs, per RIA?
- Current Economic Law v Moore's Law
- Larry Summer's Invisible Productivity?
- Krugman and Surviving the journey from A to B
- Falling Participation rate and the Henry Ford conumdrum.

A new species of human
is emerging at the leading edge of technology, as the internet and
consumer nanotechnologies create a collective extension of our minds.
The driver of our evolution is no longer DNA - it's software!http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7108

_________________Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.

Last edited by Fintan on Thu Apr 02, 2015 6:49 pm; edited 6 times in total

Let's not forget about coveted technology. The ultra high tech stuff that our "betters" have been indulging in. They've processors that are essentially nano scale yet perform as super computers.

Electro-gravitics.... maybe we can get these for skateboards someday.

In any case, a co worker and I saw some odd objects in the sky over the summer. They were silent and seemed to float more that propel. Still guessing but it seemed to me this was way beyond...way beyond something hereabout. If They have this tech then the game is up as they've figured it all out.......... I've been diligently looking for them everyday but nothing. They showed up then poof. Of course, this seems to indicate something kinda amazing if you get me. But they could have been (super) drones. They were off white and kinda shaped like a flattened tetrahedron. I saw them on Six different occasions! I did not report them and wonder about folks who do.

So roll out the bots.... we've the technology. Consider all those Manga vids from Japan - evolving into Transformers and all that. Both right and left brain has gone into this destined effort.... we have the ability.
So, note how they're not being put to work at (say) Fukushima. They could at least revamp what they already have etc. Anything needed from around the world could be shipped there. I haven't heard much about this happening, still. Something needs to be done for the workers besides treating them like waste material..........

Intel-Powered Presto Tablets to Enhance
Guest Experience at Every Applebee’s in 2014

Initially, the tablets will provide guests the ability to pay at their table,
add additional drinks, desserts and other menu items to their order and
a selection of games.

During the next 18 months, enhanced functionality, such as video
streaming, music, additional games, social media interaction with
Applebee’s active Facebook community and personal pages, sharing,
gift card sales and more, will be added...

But for others, the penny has dropped about the scale
of the challenge and opportunity hi-tech poses for us:

Quote:

This wave of automation has just begun. Parking lot attendants and toll
booth operators. Checkout clerks. Waiters. Clerks who prepare, process,
and file paper (the savings from digitalization are almost unimaginable).

Middle class jobs, too. For example, the university system has begun the
slide to a radically different structure — one with fewer teachers.

Millions and millions of jobs will disappear with stunning speed during the
next few decades.

Automation need not be feared. Many of the dooms we fear will disappear
along with the lost jobs. Automation improves productivity, giving us more
national wealth and income. We need only adapt our society to gain its
benefits, minimize the trauma of the transition, and share the benefits
(which we have failed to do with the gains from the last 30 years).

We want to succeed like Britain did in the 1760 – 1840 period, with internal
peace and prosperity. We do not want to follow France’s path during that
period.

Planning for success requires reassessment of America’s strengths and
weaknesses. For example, economists consider as strengths our relatively
high fertility and attractiveness to immigrants. Not so as automation
destroys jobs by the millions during the next few decades.

We need only adapt our society to gain its benefits,
minimize the trauma of the transition, and share the benefits
(which we have failed to do with the gains from the last 30 years).

A rather optimistic note.
From our experience of the last 30 years it is much more likely that
nobody will be prepared; that the trauma of the transition
will be maximized - not minimized; and that the benefits will NOT
be shared - and will be stolen by the elites.

Time to haul out the 'ol soapbox. _________________Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.

"Using under $1,500 worth of materials, including a small commercial MIG welder and an open-source microcontroller, Pearce's team built a 3D metal printer than can lay down thin layers of steel to form complex geometric objects. Commercial metal printers are available, but they cost over half a million dollars."

.......................
In particular, expanded 3D printing would benefit people in the developing world, who have limited access to manufactured goods, and researchers, who can radically cut costs of scientific equipment to further their science, Pearce said. "Small and medium-sized enterprises would be able to build parts and equipment quickly and easily using downloadable, free and open-source designs, which could revolutionize the economy for the benefit of the many."

"I really don't know if we are mature enough to handle it," he added cautiously, "but I think that with open-source approach, we are within reach of a Star Trek-like, post-scarcity society, in which 'replicators' can create a vast array of objects on demand, resulting in wealth for everyone at very little cost. Pretty soon, we'll be able to make almost anything."_________________formerly known as duane in a previous registration